The HP Envy 13 is a simple ultra-portable laptop, excluding VAT, priced at £749. This makes it cheaper than many business-oriented competitors-and this is not its only selling point. HP claims that this laptop has longer battery life than its competitors and has a higher-quality screen than usual at this price point. Is all this really possible?

Envy's appearance is not groundbreaking, but its clean, classic shape looks good enough to sit in any office. It is made of aluminum with a slightly recessed keyboard and a moderate drop hinge.

However, the build quality is not outstanding. Although the case is sturdy enough to be carried around, the keyboard panel will bend when you type, and pushing the rear of the 13.3-inch display will cause the desktop to deform. 

This laptop is not particularly light. It weighs 1.3 kg and has a thickness of 17 mm, which is not unbearable, but it is easy to find a thinner and lighter laptop. For example, the latest Dell XPS 13 and Apple MacBook Air machines (both starting at £833, excluding VAT) are lighter than HP and are also more robust. Or, at the same price as the Envy 13, there is the Acer Swift 5, a laptop with a larger 15.6-inch screen, weighing less than 1 kg, and 15 mm thick.

Envy has large and soft keys, which makes it comfortable to type even for long periods of time. They are also quiet, so you won't annoy other people in the office, and the strong backlight and clear fonts add to the overall elegant typing experience. However, some people may prefer the more aggressive and click-through operation of the Apple MacBook Air or Dell XPS 13.

The compact layout can also be annoying. The power button is sandwiched between the delete key and the camera deactivation key, the fingerprint reader is tucked beside the cursor keys, and there is no numeric keypad. You will get used to these quirks, but larger portable devices are always easier to adapt. 

The touchpad is not our favorite either. It is not particularly large, the surface friction is a bit large, and the buttons feel soft. Daily use is no problem, but it is not a bonus point.

Envy 13 has a 1080p IPS touch screen, which looks great. The peak brightness we measured is 422cd/m2, which is very suitable for indoor and outdoor use. A black point of 0.21cd/m2 translates to a contrast ratio of 2,009:1. This is amazing for IPS panels, and the result is incredible vibrancy, depth, and nuance: the browser window, photos, and media files are full of vibrancy.

The color coverage is also very good. The panel renders 97% of the sRGB color gamut, with an average Delta E of 1.26, so there is enough accuracy and breadth for mainstream color-sensitive tasks. The temperature of 6,086K is reasonable if it is a bit warmer.

However, we have a few caveats. This panel does not cover DCI-P3 or Adobe RGB color gamut, so it is not suitable for HDR or design work. Both Dell and Apple can handle a wider range of colors, and we also recommend that their 16:10 aspect ratio is more like a letterbox screen than Envy is more suitable for productivity.

The Intel Core i5-1135G7 processor powers the HP Envy 13, providing four hyper-threaded cores and a maximum boost speed of 4.2GHz. It is paired with 8GB dual-channel memory and 512GB SSD, providing excellent read and write speeds of 1,763MB/sec and 964MB/sec respectively in our test.

This is similar to the specifications of the Acer and Dell laptops we mentioned above. The main difference is that this laptop also includes an Nvidia GeForce MX450 GPU, rather than relying on CPU-based built-in graphics. But don't expect transformative performance-it is a modest model with only 2GB of dedicated memory, and it is only slightly faster than Intel's integrated graphics.

Having said that, the total score of 117 in our application benchmark test shows that Envy 13 is fast enough to handle Office applications, browser-based tools, and daily multitasking. It lags slightly behind the Acer and Dell models (although to be fair, we tested the Core i7 variant of the Dell XPS 13), but the gap between the three laptops is not that big.

Envy's strongest performance is in the image editing test, its score is 155. Intel CPUs usually excel in single-threaded tasks, which is good news for everyday photo editing-although it does mean that Envy is weak in hard creative work.

And Envy cannot match the M1 processor in the Apple MacBook Air. In Geekbench's single-core and multi-core tests, HP scored 1,347 and 4,369, respectively, while MacBook scored 1,724 and 7,476. For heavy workloads, this may translate into a significant productivity gap.

Nevertheless, as promised, Envy 13 did stand out in our battery life test. With the screen set to 170cd/m2, Envy can play 14 hours and 35 minutes of video in a loop on a single charge. This is twice Dell's, five hours more than Acer, and two hours more than MacBook. In the work test with Envy, you will also get more than 10 hours of use time-this is obviously a device that can handle the efficiency of a whole day of work.

Envy 13 has two USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A ports, one on each side of the laptop. There is also a USB-C port that supports power supply on the left, as well as a microSD card slot and an audio jack. The power comes from a traditional barrel connector, making the USB-C port available for peripheral devices. Internally, HP has dual-band Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5 and TPM 2.0 chips. 

This should be sufficient connectivity for daily use, but please note that there is no native HDMI connector, no Ethernet, and no Thunderbolt support. We should also point out that the webcam does not support Windows Hello, although the stereo speakers have a good midrange, but no bass, they are only suitable for daily casual use.

Then, based on your priorities, some competitors can say that they are better equipped-Dell does not have a full-size USB port or HDMI, but it has Thunderbolt and Windows Hello, while Acer offers HDMI and Thunderbolt.

The HP Envy 13 won’t stand out because of its appearance, manufacturing quality, or performance, but it has an excellent screen, long battery life, and a comfortable keyboard. It is also cheaper than some of the biggest competitors.

This means that if you need an affordable laptop that can last all day, Envy is well worth considering. But be aware that it’s easy to find other portable devices that are slimmer, lighter, faster, and more stylish.

0.9GHz-4.2GHz Intel Core i5-1135G7

1 x USB 3.2 Gen 1 (Type-C), 2 x USB 3.2 Gen 1 (Type-A), 1 x microSD, 1 x audio

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